Those life drawing classes....

[Cadence]

What if you could not attend them? No time, no money, or just no classes available? Do figure drawing books still help? Like the Loomis one? Thanks guys..

[TheYellowDart]

Yah like Lessard said, those books can only teach you so much. They can give you a procedure, and tools to use for life drawing, but you'll eventually need to apply what you learn from them to a class.

If I were you, I would get those Loomis books, online or in German, and perhaps the Vilppu Drawing Manual and a good book of poses, such as "Nude bodies nude", or even Vilppu's CDs and do as much of that as you can. For fun, you can always go out to the book store, coffee shop, zoo or whatever and draw from "life" there. Vilppu's Sketching On Location book is awesome for that. They aren't models, and they'll move, but it still will help.

Eventually, you'll want to find somewhere that you can sit down and draw from a model for 3 hours or so. Even if the instruction isn't "good" (say a community college) just go and use the model and attempt to apply what you've read/studied from the books. Of course take/"learn" what you can from whoever is teaching the class and even come on here and see what other people say of your drawings.

Lastly, be weary what books you are studying from. There aren't "that" many good ones out there so you'll need to hunt down the good ones. Most people on here can help you out with that; in fact I'm fairly sure there are some book list threads you could search for.

Good Luck!!

[Cadence]

Thank you for the info
You see im at university in a course which has nothing to do with art (art is only a hobby for me), so finding the time to attend such classes is a major problem. I also don't know where to look for such classes here, but the time problem is worse. I only have the loomis book, 'Figure drawing' or something like that, and I'm currently doing the mannekin drawing section, even though I'm going at a snail's pace x_x; I think it'll just be that and photo references for now.
Thanks again!